Word: clays
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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That something else was Cassius Clay. For his night's work on Patterson, Liston collected $300,000 of a $1,600,000 gate; with Clay, the gate might go to $8,000,000. It was a casting director's dream: Liston, the ex-con, scowling, surly, somnolent; Clay, the will-o'-the-wisp, gaudy, gay, garrulous, boastful, poetic. This time there would be emotion enough for everybody. People hate Liston and he hates them right back. People hiss at Clay and he laughs in their faces...
...straight man. Both of them knew how good the publicity could be. At one of Liston's prefight workouts, Cassius pranced around outside the ring gleefully hurling insults at "that big fatty." "You can't punch hard enough to break an egg," snarled Liston. "Whoopee!" yelled Clay, squaring off: "You just stand there and pretend you're an egg." Handlers rushed in to pry the fighters apart. "How did it look?" Clay whispered to a friend...
...whole idea, Cassius insisted, was "to make Liston mad." One night Sonny slapped Clay's face when Cassius taunted him in a casino on the Strip. Just before the fight, Cassius bounced into the ring, solemnly shook Patterson's hand, started for Liston's corner-then threw up his hands in mock terror and dived for the seats. The crowd almost busted laughing. No sooner was Patterson counted out than Clay was back, shaking off cops, grabbing a microphone, proclaiming "That was a disgrace. They should apologize for wasting my time on that farce." At Liston...
Died. Major General Henry Clay Hodges, 103, West Point's oldest alumnus (class of '81), who was born on the frontier, was appointed to the Military Academy by Ulysses S. Grant, campaigned against Comanches on the Pecos, Moro rebels in the Philippines, Pancho Villa in Mexico, and led his 39th Division to France in World War I, before retiring in 1920 to an old soldier's place of honor at every West Point graduation since then except two; in Stamford, Conn...
Brash Cassius Clay, now the leading pretender to Liston's throne, entered the ring after the bout and proclaimed, "I'm done with talking; I want to fight." And, he warned, "If he gives me any jive, I'll cut the prediction to five...